The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [533]
When dawn broke, the bodies of the officer and eighteen of the rank and file were found wedged among the rocks or drifting face-downward in the eddies under the banks. The rest had been swept down on the flood and were never seen again. As for Azmatulla Khan, his spies having warned him of what was in the wind, he had promptly removed from the Lagman Valley, and the two columns that had been sent to take him had returned empty-handed.
The Khugianis also forewarned had shown less caution.
The mixed column whose task was to deal with that tribe had, as planned, been the last to move off. But their departure having been further delayed by the disaster at the ford, midnight had come and gone before they left, and it was was close on one o'clock by the time they marched – seeing as they went the distant gleam of bonfires and flares along the river, where the frantic search for survivors continued.
‘I said this was an ill-omened year,’ muttered Zarin to Risaldar Mahmud Khan of the Guides as the squadrons moved off in the darkness, and Mahmud Khan had replied grimly: ‘And it is not yet old. Let us hope that for many of these Khugianis it will grow no older after tomorrow – and that we ourselves will live to see Mardan again and draw our pensions and watch our children's children become Jemadars and Risaldars in their turn.’
‘Ameen!’ murmured Zarin devoutly.
Despite the darkness and the difficulty of keeping to a track that even by daylight was barely distinguishable from the rough and stony ground that stretched away on either hand, the long column of infantry, cavalry and artillery had made good progress, and it was still dark when the cavalry, riding ahead, were halted within a mile of the village of Fatehabad and ordered to wait there until the rest of the column caught up with them. By then there was not much of the night left, but Wigram and his two squadrons, old hands at this sort of campaigning, selected a spot under some trees and made themselves tolerably comfortable for what little remained of it.
The village was reported to be friendly, but when the dawn broke it was seen that no smoke rose from it, and a scouting party sent to investigate found that it was deserted. The villagers had taken all their foodstuffs and livestock with them, and except for a few pariah dogs and a gaunt cat who spat at the sowars from the doorway of an empty house, nothing moved. ‘So much for our intelligence,’ observed Wigram, eating breakfast in the shade of a tree. ‘ “Friendly”, they said. About as friendly as a nest of hornets! It's obvious that the whole blasted jing-bang have run off to join the enemy.’
He had sent out patrols under Risaldar Mahmud Khan to report on the movements of the Khugianis, but though the patrols had not returned by the time the guns and the infantry appeared at ten o'clock in the morning, he had by then received news from another source:
‘Ashton seems to think that they will stand and fight,’ said Wigram, tossing over a crumpled scrap of paper that Zarin had just brought him. The brief, scrawled message had come by way of a grass-cutter who said he had been given it by an elderly and unknown village woman, with instructions to take it at once to Risaldar Zarin Khan of the Guides rissala, who would reward him. He had supposed it to be a love-letter. But Zarin had known better, for it was written in Angrezi. And as only one person could have sent it, he had wasted no time in taking it to his Commanding Officer.
‘Enemy entrenched in great strength on plateau overlooking Gandamak road,’ read Wally. ‘Estimate 5,000. No guns, but position, defences and morale tip-top. Any attempt to dislodge by frontal attack will mean heavy losses. Shelling might do it. If not, they will have to be lured out into the open, which should